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Unit 25: William Golding — Lord of the Flies: Detailed Study of Text-I

intellectual; importantly, he behaves somewhat childishly in his first encounter with Piggy. Notes
Still, Golding suggests that Ralph has a gravity and maturity beyond his years. He is a natural
leader, a quality that the other boys immediately recognize when they vote him leader. The
vote for chief establishes a conflict between the different values espoused by Jack and Ralph.
Jack assumes that he should assume the role automatically, while Ralph, who is reluctant to
accept leadership, achieves it by vote. Ralph therefore comes to represent a democratic ethos.
In contrast to the violent Jack and charismatic Ralph, Piggy is immediately established as the
intellectual of the group. Although he is physically inept, clumsy, and asthmatic, he has a
rational mind and the best grasp of their situation. It is his knowledge of the conch shell that
allows Ralph to summon the rest of the boys together and he who shows the most concern for
some sort of established order in meetings and in day-to-day life. He has a particular interest
in names, immediately asking Ralph for his and wishing that Ralph would reciprocate the
question, as well as insisting that a list of names be taken when the boys assemble. This
emphasis on naming is one of the first indications of the imposition of an ordered society on
the island (it also recalls the naming of the animals in Genesis). For Piggy, names not only
facilitate organization and communication but also mark one’s position within a social hierarchy.
It is significant that Piggy is forced by the others to keep his despised nickname from home,
which re-inscribes his inferior social status from the Home Counties in the new dynamic of
the island. We may also note that Piggy’s name symbolically connects him to the pigs on the
island, which in subsequent chapters become the targets of many of the boys’ unrestrained
violent impulses. As the boys turn their rage against the pigs, Golding foreshadows Piggy’s
own murder at the close of the novel.

The reinforcement of Piggy’s nickname, which clearly humiliates him, also indicates that the
boys have imported to the island the cruelty of human social life. Ralph’s mockery of Piggy
is the first instance of inequality on the island, and it foreshadows the gross inequities and
injustices to come. We may also note here Piggy’s background (as an orphan who lives with
an aunt) and his poor diction details that indicate that, unlike Ralph and Jack, Piggy is a child
from a working-class background. His immediate ostracizing on the island suggests another
way in which the social hierarchies of the boys’ home lives are reproduced in island life.
Golding suggests that Piggy’s marginalization is due not only to his unfortunate appearance
and poor health but also because he is of a lower class status than the other boys, who have
brought with them to the island the class prejudices of the Home Counties.
It is also significant here that Golding emphasizes the establishment of property and subtly
critiques the concept of ownership by discovery. Ralph gains status from his possession of the
conch shell, which gives him the authority to speak when the boys come together. Also, when
he surveys the island from the summit of the mountain he states that it “belongs” to them,
almost as an act of colonization or conquering. The invocation of colonial rhetoric suggests the
struggles to come over ownership of the key resources on the island (such as the conch and
Piggy’s glasses) and over the power to rule one another.

The novel’s first chapter establishes another theme that recurs throughout the novel: the corruption
of innocence. Golding emphasizes the childish nature of the boys from the outset of the
narrative, and he suggests that many of the struggles that mark their time on the island have
less to do with either the natural brutality of the human spirit or the corruption of political
society than with the boys’ young age and incapacity for responsibility. Ralph’s first reaction
to the abandonment is to play in the water, and Jack’s impulse to “kill” falls flat when he is
confronted with an opportunity to do so. The chatter of the younger boys-who fear a “beastie”
and a “snake thing,” as well as Piggy’s constant mention of his “auntie” at home who gave
him candy, are narrative details that underscore the boys’ youth and their essential innocence.
As the brutality and violence among the boys increase in later chapters, Golding suggests that

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